PEORIA — Whether Peoria police acted in “good faith” when they raided a Central Peoria home last month in the hopes of finding evidence about a bogus Twitter account will play a major factor in a drug case that arose out of that search.

No charges have been filed against the owner of the now-defunct @peoriamayor account which lampooned Mayor Jim Ardis, but charges were filed against one of the account owner’s roommates for marijuana which was found as police were searching the house on April 15.

That person, Jacob Elliott, 36, of 1220 N. University St., pleaded not guilty Thursday and had his case set for trial on June 30.

But sometime before then, his attorney Dan O’Day will likely file a motion to suppress the evidence found when police went into the house. At issue is going to be whether the prosecutors should be allowed to use the drugs against Elliott even though the reasoning behind the warrant was incorrect.

O’Day believes his client’s Fourth Amendment right not to be subjected to unreasonable searches was violated. And that violation was so egregious that nothing can legally fix it. State’s Attorney Jerry Brady believes the opposite, that police acted in “good faith” when they obtained the warrant and reasonably believed — though erroneously — that a crime had been committed.

Steve Beckett, a law professor at the University of Illinois and a defense attorney in Champaign, says “good faith” is a doctrine that has been established over the years to allow for honest mistakes by police.

“The premise behind the good faith exception is that the police are using proper procedure to go forth in their effort, follow the law and conduct a proper search and seizure,” he said.

And the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the 1984 U.S. v. Leon case that evidence shouldn’t be excluded if the police acted in “reasonable good faith.” That creates a balancing test that a trial judge must use to determine whether what the police did was reasonable. Otherwise, the high court wrote that such a statement could be used by police in every case, thus eliminating the Fourth Amendment altogether.

Beckett, while noting it will be up to the judge in Elliott’s case to make the final call, has questions.

“The police were thinking, ‘we were supposed to be in here looking for social media, this pranky tweeting thing. To turn that around and look for drugs seems to me to stand good faith on its head,” he said.

O’Day has said he believes the error made by the police is so great that good faith can’t apply.

Page 2 of 2 - Local defense attorney Kevin Sullivan believes there is another issue at hand here. He said he believes the affidavit for the warrant was overly broad and focused on crimes unrelated to what they were looking for.

“To apply the good faith exception, courts not only have to look at the search warrant itself but the reasonableness of the entire search process,” he said. “One of the things the court may want to look at is whether the police reached out for a legal opinion prior to presenting the warrant to a judge.”

Andy Kravetz can be reached at 686-3283 or akravetz@pjstar.com. Follow him on Twitter @andykravetz.